Sure, there are already a handful of options out there for extending the life of your iPhone / iPod battery, but since when have we been ones to gripe about a little competition? Kensington has just introduced a standard and miniature version of its Battery Pack and Charger for iPhone / iPod, which unsurprisingly provides juice to your device’s internal battery and can be recharged simultaneously. As you could likely guess, the only differences between the two contraptions are the size, price and battery life; the 0.22-pound standard model extends play time to up to 100 hours (music) / 6 hours (talk), while the even tinier mini version livens things up for another 30 hours (music) / 3 hours (talk). Each is available now for $69.99 / $49.99.

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I’ve got my load-shedding life half sorted out. My garage doors have a manual override, my laptop will keep me going through three out of every four load-shed hours, and my 3G cards from both operators protect me from bad planning, i.e. it is unlikely that both operators’ base stations in the area will run out of power during load-shedding.

But my laptop will last only if I keep to the basics and avoid heavyweight applications like watching DVDs in the absence of a functioning TV set. Movies chew up laptop battery life faster than an aluminium smelter chewing into Eskom’s reserves. That means the option of charging your cellphone from your laptop via USB charger is not on if you want to maximise operating time.

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